


Moonpie and Meemaw

by damalur



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Crack, Dinosaurs, Early Work, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meemaw entered the room Velociraptor-first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonpie and Meemaw

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted as an in-joke over at Paradox (sheldon_penny on LiveJournal) circa 2009; it probably doesn't make much sense if you weren't hanging around that particularly community at that particular time, and probably isn't terribly funny even if you _were_ hanging around that particular community at that particular time, but I finally got the formatting to work on AO3, so here it is for posterity. The in-joke, at least, survives. (Skraaaaw!)
> 
>  **Original notes:** The author wishes to thank Ryan North for his awesome webcomic,  middle_cyclone for being awesome, the people of Paradox for also being awesome, and sunshine_splash for requesting the raptor Jesus thing on paradox_drabble because man, that is an awesome prompt. No Velociraptors were harmed in the making of this story.

And then came the day when Sheldon walked into the room, hands clasped in front of him, and joyfully announced that his meemaw was coming to town.

To Penny's mild astonishment, this sent her boyfriend into an immediate frenzy. Although Leonard _claimed_ to have an actual day-job, and although Penny had seen evidence (a white board, a pocket protector, food) to suggest that he did, in fact, work, much of his time seemed dedicated to hypnotizing the television with his eyes and tracking down obscure Malaysian fighting kites on the internet. She hadn't seen him move so fast since the time they ran into Kurt at the paintball course.

"Sheldon, I need dates and times. Duration! Is she staying long? Is she traveling alone?" Leonard stopped spinning like a hamster in a wheel and covered his mouth with his hand, rather like he was trying to hold in vomit. "Is she bringing... _Booboo_?"

"Well of course, Leonard, why wouldn't she bring Booboo?" Sheldon condescended. 

"Hang on," Penny said, "Booboo? What's a Booboo?"

"Booboo is my grandmother's pet, Penny, and Leonard, I simply don't understand why you react that way every time Meemaw comes to town—"

"Since you're not going to give me dates and times," Leonard said, and went to the refrigerator, and starting pulling out can after can of Red Bull, "I'm going to go ahead and board over my door. Penny, when Meemaw is gone, I want you to tap out the rhythm of the Imperial March on the wall outside my room to let me know it's safe."

"Wow." Penny sat back. "Is Meemaw that bad?"

Leonard added an Amp to his teetering stockpile of legalized enhancement drugs. "Let me put it this way," he said. "A visit from my mother is"—he gave a braying laugh—"it's sort of like a visit from whatever you'd get if you crossed the Easter Bunny, Stephen Hawking, and Batman." He was out of sight before Penny finished assembling that mental image in her head (would the Bathawking Bunny ride in a wheelchair, and more importantly, would he have rabbit or bat ears?). It was the last they saw of Leonard for weeks.

"Penny," Sheldon said, "I'll need to drive me to the toystore to pick up a welcome present. I _believe_ Meemaw has only six models of _Edmontonia_ , although I could be mistaken. I do hope I'm not mistaken." He shot her a scathing look. "Well? Why haven't you gotten your keys yet?"

-

 

Meemaw came through the front door Velociraptor-first.

"Oh holy _shit_!" said Penny.

-

 

Unfortunately, there was only so long Penny could cling to the bookshelf before her arms started to give out.

"Don't worry, dear," Meemaw said. "I know Booboo may look intimidating, but he's the politest and best-trained housepet you will ever meet. Why Mrs. Donovan, who lives across the trailer park from me—Mrs. Donovan borrows Booboo here when her great-grandchildren come over so they have someone to play with!"

"SKRAAAW!" said Booboo, and stared at Penny in a way that did not make her think of _Land Before Time_.

"Perhaps Booboo would like some Jurasso-Biscuits?" Sheldon suggested. "I often find myself parched and peckish after a long trip."

"What a wonderful idea, Moonpie!" Meemaw. "And what wonderful alliteration! You know how I love it when words alliterate."

"I'm fond of plosives myself," Sheldon said indulgently. (Sheldon! _Indulgent!_ Penny banged her elbow against Leonard's Klingon-to-English dictionary in shock.) "Do you like the _Edmontonia_ model? I hope I was correct in thinking you only had six of that particular depiction."

"Only _five_ ," Meemaw gushed.

"SKRAAAAW!" said Booboo.

-

 

Later, after Penny had been coaxed down from her perch—or ignored until she fell off, which amounted to the same thing—the three of them sat arrayed on the couch as Meemaw's knitting needles clacked gaily. Booboo was curled next to the door, snoozing peacefully after a snack of Jurasso-Biscuits and luminous goldfish.

"And that's why every family in the neighborhood is required to have a radiation-containment suit for each person," Meemaw concluded. "Sheldon was such a rambunctious little boy!"

"Yeah," Penny said. "He's a pretty...rambunctious...adult. Too." _Adult?_ she thought.

Right at that moment, the oven timer sounded like the pealing of heavenly bells!

"Oh, that must be the cookies!" Meemaw said, and folded her electric-green-on-black muffler to put back in the knitting bag. "Sheldon loves my cookies," she told Penny. "Before he went away to college, they were almost the only thing that could lure him out of his dungeon."

"Mee _maw_!" Sheldon said, the same sort of delighted smirk on his face that he'd worn in the great Penny v. Powdered Laundry Detergent battle of '08. ("I told you that powdered detergent clumps!" he'd said, and he was right, the dumbfuck, but it was cheaper than liquid detergent, and Penny didn't exactly have a couple hundred extra bucks shoved up some superhero's ass, okay?). "Meemaw exaggerates, of course. It wasn't even a proper laboratory."

"And why my George couldn't supply you with the equipment you needed, I will never understand." Meemaw patted Sheldon on the cheek on her way to the kitchen. "Of course, my George had other talents! He could shoot so close to a raccoon that it would crap itself," she said, and shook her head in wonder. 

"Um," Penny said, and then Meemaw pulled her cookies out of the oven. If there was an olfactory equivalent of an orgasm, Penny experienced it on the spot.

"Oh _God_ ," she said, and shot to her feet.

"Oh Jesusraptor," Meemaw corrected primly, but her smile was the smile of a kindly old goddess brining nectar and ambrosia to her people. She fanned the tray with an oven mitt, probably to torment Penny.

The cookies themselves were made of chocolate chips and asskicking. Penny had never tasted anything so mind-blowingly delicious in her life.

-

 

Much later, when the cookies were all gone and Meemaw was freshening up in the john, a thought occurred to Penny.

"Did she say...Jesusraptor?"

Sheldon frowned. "Penny, it isn't nice to disrespect other people's spiritual beliefs."

Like a small child with a shiny gun, Penny was instantly distracted. "Excuse me? You make fun of other people's spiritual beliefs all the time! Last week you told me that your mother's prayer group hadn't succeeding in praying the Cowboys to the Super Bowl, so they were working on making all tadpoles drop dead because your cousin the third-grader decided frogs were proof of evolution!"

"I wasn't making that up," Sheldon protested. "The story is true and factual and speaks for itself!"

"Well—dinosaurs aren't a religion!"

"At least we possess evidence that dinosaurs existed!" Sheldon said, his eyes narrowed into angry, stoat-like slits.

At that moment, Meemaw entered the room, patting her hands dry on the tail of her cape. "Are we ready to start our outing? Moonpie, is that nice boy who lives with you going to be driving us?"

"Unfortunately, Leonard has demonstrated yet again his remarkable lack of character," Sheldon said. "I've chosen Penny for that happy task."

"Wonderful!" Meemaw said. "I'll just fetch Booboo's leash. Booboo? Booboo, dear, it's time to wake up from your nap!"

"SKRAAAAAW!" said Booboo.

"Dear?" Meemaw said, looking over her shoulder at Penny as she fastened Booboo's leash to his collar. "Why haven't you gotten your keys yet?"

-

 

As they drove to their first stop, Meemaw related a tale from her working days.

"Unfortunately, Doctor Schneider was lost along with the Grail," she said. "Doctor Brody and I spent years searching to rediscover the location of the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, but we never could find it again."

"Wow," Penny said, and adjusted her rearview mirror so she could see Sheldon's and Meemaw's faces in the backseat. It was at a stoplight, though, so Penny was still practicing safe driving habits. "Wait. Isn't that the plot of _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_?"

Meemaw chuckled. "Oh, those old movies! That nice Steven man came by after I'd retired asking if he could do a series of films based on my memoirs. Of course, I was disappointed when they changed the protagonist to a man, but," she sighed, "what can one do?"

"SKRAAW!" said Booboo.

Penny spared the Velociraptor a glance. "Okay, seriously, if he barfs goldfish on my carseat, Sheldon, you're paying to have it cleaned."

"Don't be absurd, Penny, you know that Booboo would ask you to pull over," Sheldon said. "And Meemaw, you know that they couldn't find anyone worthy of portraying you other than Harrison Ford."

"So you're actually an archeologist?" Penny asked.

"Oh Cretaceous Period, no! A paleontologist," Meemaw said, "although I have brought about some archeological revolutions as a side-project. I admit that I was just a titch disappointed when Moonpie here went into the hard sciences! but he is so good at what he does, aren't you, Moonpie?"

Sheldon beamed.

"Is that Coldplay I hear on the radio?" Meemaw said. "They are my very favorite band!"

"Really?" Penny said, and fiddled with the volume knob. "They're one of my favorite groups, too. Have you ever been to one of their concerts?"

"Oh, yes! I won tickets to their most recent tour. Do you know, I actually had to explain to Sheldon who they are? He thought I'd been awarded tickets to see a play about winter, the poor dear!"

"Nooooo," Penny said.

-

 

"Um. This is an arcade."

"That it is, dear," Meemaw said, standing by as Sheldon opened the passenger door for Booboo. "Sheldon and I just love to play the Jurassic Park arcade game, and this is the only arcade in all of Pasadena with working arcade guns!"

"Meemaw does love her T. Rex shooting time," Sheldon said with a fond smile. "She and I hold the high score on this machine, as well as several records in Texas."

"Texans _are_ better at killing dinosaurs," Meemaw said, "but I suppose you would expect that! Of course, we're always careful to make sure Booboo knows that these are _fictional_ dinosaurs. I wouldn't dream of killing dinosaurs in real life!"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Penny echoed. She trailed Sheldon and Meemaw into the arcade, dodging clusters of kids that had stopped to gape at a real, live Velociraptor. 

"Here, dear," Meemaw said, and counted out six quarters into Penny's palm. "You can go play Dance Dance Revolution or that horrid guitar game while you wait. You may want to use a sanitary wipe on the buttons before you touch them; one of my grand-nephews caught typhus from Pacman!"

"...Thanks? But maybe I'll just watch the two of you play," Penny said. "You'll probably need someone to hold Booboo."

"Aren't you a considerate girl!" Meemaw praised. "Here, Boo, go with the nice girl who lives across the hall from Sheldon! If you're a good boy, Mommy will bake you some extra cookies!"

"I'm good," Penny said, taking Booboo's leash.

Meemaw gave her a puzzled expression. "I'm sure you are, dear," she said.

"So," Penny said, and stuck her hands in her pockets. "...Does that mean I can have extra cookies?" 

"We'll see," Meemaw said, and ruffled Booboo's hair. 

"SKRAAW!" said Booboo. It was a pleased sound.

Jurassic Park—the game was actually called _The Lost World: Jurassic Park_ , but Penny didn't quibble—was set in a dark back room of the Tee Time arcade. Booboo immediately claimed the air hockey table in the middle of the room for his own; he hopped up on it with all the agility a person could expect from a Velociraptor and started nudging a puck around with his nose. Since he seemed content for the moment, Penny tied his lead around one leg of the hockey table and turned to Sheldon and Meemaw...

...Only to find them gaping in horror at _The Lost World: Jurrasic Park_. Some young hooligan had left popcorn on the seat!

"Oh my," Meemaw said, aghast. "Moonpie, what are we to do? Some young hooligan has left popcorn on the seat!"

"They can't leave popcorn on the seat!" Sheldon cried, also aghast. "It's unclean, and additionally it leaves us no place to sit! Meemaw, this is a disaster! I'm so sorry that your visit to Pasadena was ruined—"

"Hey," Penny said. "I could brush the seat off for you. You know. If that would help."

Meemaw's hand crept to the silver charm dangling at her neck—a tasteful rendering of a small raptor nailed to a cross. "You would do that for us?" Sheldon said, his arm wrapping around Meemaw's shoulders.

"I will bake you as many cookies as you can eat before you explode in a shower of visceral organs and less specific carnage, you dear, dear girl," Meemaw promised.

Penny was touched at their gratitude in an entirely metaphorical way.

-

 

Sheldon and Meemaw's final stop of the day was the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, where in addition to two floors of dinosaurs and dinosaur-related displays there was a traveling exhibit called _Dinosaurs Unearthed_. Booboo got over-excited at the lush museum grounds and attempted to lunge ahead. "SKRAAAAAAAW!" 

"Heel, Booboo!" Meemaw said, and snapped at his leash. He trotted back to her side. "He's usually so well behaved," Meemaw explained apologetically, "but beautiful landscapes excite him! You should have seen him in obedience school. The classes were held on a beach, poor boy."

"Why 'Booboo'?" Penny asked. "Is he named after anyone in particular?"

"It's a corruption of Beauregard Beauregard, which is his legal name," Sheldon said.

"For the Confederate general and the Canadian mathematician," Meemaw added, "but poor Boo could never say that mouthful! He began calling himself Booboo, and I'm afraid that we have all nearly forgotten his full name."

"Ahuh," Penny said.

"Moonpie, darling, I have a something serious I want to discuss with you before we perambulate through the museum." Meemaw paused on the steps and drew a handkerchief from her handbag, which was crafted from the skin of a ninja. "I've been considering my will of late."

"Meemaw, no," Sheldon said.

"Don't be foolish, Moonpie. To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." She dabbed at her forehead with the handkerchief and started toward the ticket line. "I have left everything to you, of course, but I'm going to add a condition. If you do want to inherit my millions, my trailer, and my Velociraptor, you must marry that nice girl who lives across the hall."

"I'm standing right here," Penny said. "You promised to bake me cookies until I explode!"

"What was her name again?" Meemaw said.

"..." said Sheldon.

"I have a boyfriend," Penny added. "You haven't seen him, 'cause—well, he boarded himself in his room. But I have a boyfriend, is the point!"

"Meemaw doesn't want her Moonpie to die alone and unloved!" Meemaw said.

"..." said Sheldon.

"SKRAAAAW!" said Booboo.

"Hello, I am NOT MARRYING ANYONE," Penny said. "I have a career, does anyone remember that?"

At that moment, dark clouds filled the sky, lightning flashed, thunder crashed—and Barry Kripke _cut Meemaw's place in line_!

"Coopew," he said. "Hewe to see the entomology exhibit? I pwefew the beaws, myself, but those pwobably give you nightmawes, don't they, Coopew?"

"Bears?" Meemaw said.

"Oh, Coopew, is this youw gwandmothew?"

" _Bears_?" Meemaw said. "Bears are Jesusraptorless killing machines!"

"Booboo," Penny muttered, "maybe we should stay out of this." She took a step backward; Booboo cocked his head inquiringly.

"Moonpie," Meemaw said, "is this that bad, bad man who destroyed your robot and humiliated you on live national public radio?"

"Yes, Meemaw," Sheldon said. "This is Kripke."

"Really," Meemaw said, and her hand rose to loose the collar around her pet's neck. 

"Aww, Coopew, awe you letting youw gwandma—" Kripke started to say, but at that instant Booboo's collar dropped to the ground.

"Booboo," Meemaw ordered, " _kill_."

Booboo dove into battle headlong, his razored claws glinting, his mouth an ominous maw, his tail wagging from side to side in pure, untainted joy.

Sheldon, Penny, and Meemaw took shelter behind the ticket booth, so, as Meemaw said, "We won't be splattered with that horrid man's gore."

"Cool," Penny said. "On an unrelated topic, have I mentioned that I'm not marrying Sheldon?"

Meemaw sighed sadly. "That is a shame," she said. "If Sheldon doesn't marry you, he can't inherit the knowledge of the secret ingredient of my cookie recipe!"

"Why didn't you say so!" Penny exclaimed. "Sheldon, do you have a ring?"

"What?" Sheldon patted his pockets. "I suppose there's my imitation Green Lantern power ring..."

"Great!" Penny grabbed it from his hand and dropped to one knee.

"Oh, Booboo, I think I'm going to cry!" Meemaw said.

"Sheldon Cooper," Penny said, staring up into her beau's shocked face. "I moved in across the hall from you three years ago, and, okay, maybe it wasn't love, but it was definitely something at first sight. You can be kind of a dick, but I like arguing with you, and Leonard's been ticking me off." She bit her lip, gathering her courage, and took the final plunge: "Would you do me the honor of giving me your hand in marriage?"

"I," Sheldon said. "What?"

"Marry me, Moonpie," Penny said.

"Are you...can I have my own office?"

"Sure," Penny said.

"And you won't touch my comic books?"

"Not if my life depended on it," Penny promised.

"Well," Sheldon said, "I suppose you're as good a choice to mother a new species as anyone. Our children will be smart and unafraid of spiders!"

"Great," Penny said again, and jammed the ring on his finger.

"Oh dear!" Meemaw wiped her eyes. "I'm afraid I've ruined my mascara!"

"SKRAAAW!" said Booboo.

 

-

 

 _Dinosaurs Unearthed_ was a massive exhibit filled with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs and displays on the latest research into the terrible lizards interesting enough to hold even Penny's attention. Witness the awesome might of the Mesozoic Era!

"Everyone knows that dinosaurs don't have feathers," Meemaw sniffed.

-

 

Howard and Raj went with the newly-betrothed couple to drop Meemaw off at the train station.

"Are these the nice homosexual friends of yours, Sheldon?" Meemaw eyed Howard and Raj thoughtfully. "Do the two of you roleplay in the bedroom?"

"Dude," Raj said, "Sheldon. Your grandmother has a dinosaur."

"Gay roleplaying?" Penny wondered.

Sheldon twitched. "Meemaw had some quaint ideas about superheroes."

Meemaw hugged her grandson close, and unsurprisingly, Sheldon didn't resist. "Thank you for such a wonderful visit, my nummy-nummy Moonpie," she said. "You give Meemaw a call next time the university forces you to take a day off."

"Goodbye, Meemaw," Sheldon said.

"Bye, Meemaw," Penny said. "Bye, Booboo." She was surprised to find that she was tearing up.

"SKRAAAW!" Booboo said, a tear in his own eye. He hated goodbyes!

"Oh, Penny," Meemaw said, "we are practically family now!" 

Penny opened her arms and Meemaw gave her a dinosaur-sized hug. Just before she pulled away, she whispered something in Penny's ear, and then she trotted off, Velociraptor at her heels.

Penny put her hand in Sheldon's and they stood there for a long time. When Meemaw had finally disappeared into the sunset, he turned to his fiancee. "Penny, what did Meemaw say to you?" he asked.

"The secret ingredient," Penny said.

"And what's that?"

Penny smiled, supremely satisfied, and said, "Vodka."


End file.
